Freedom of Information Act 2000 Request

List of prosecutions for murder where a body has not been found

Request

I wonder if you are able to help me. I’m conducting doctoral research in forensic archaeology and in particular, I’m examining forensic archaeological reporting practices in cases of missing persons presumed deceased. As part of my research I need to consider no body murder investigations and prosecutions. I’d be grateful if you are willing to provide me with a list of prosecutions for murder where a body has not been found. Preferably from 1950 onwards but if that is too onerous I’d happily readjust the timescale.

Response

Since the inception of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 1986, the number of prosecutions in England and Wales, as described in your request, has not been centrally recorded.

In order to establish whether the circumstances described in question one of your request are contained within a case, a manual examination of relevant cases within our Case Management System (CMS) would be required. Our CMS holds recorded data since April 2005. This data includes the number of prosecutions that have commenced in respect of murder offences. As an indication of the work a manual examination would involve, records indicate that there have been an equivalent of 7,173 cases involving murder offences since 2005 to the end of September 2019.

Section 12(1) of the FOI Act means public authorities are not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit for central government it is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3.5 working days determining whether the department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

We believe that the cost of reviewing the equivalent of 7,173 cases would exceed the appropriate limit and are therefore unable to respond to parts one and two of your request.